[This article
appeared under the title “The World Population Explosion and the Cost of
Uncontrolled Immigration” in the Journal of Social, Political and Economic
Studies, Winter 1994, pp. 481-510; and also under the title “Uncontrolled
Immigration’s Threat to American Identity” in The St. Croix Review, June
1995.The title given here is the one
given to it originally by Murphey himself, and is the one he prefers.]

The On-Going Forfeiture of the United States' Cultural

and National
Existence: A Look at The Immigration Invasion

Dwight D. Murphey

Wichita State
University

It would hardly seem too much to say that the cultural and even the political
existence of the United States as we have known it is now seriously in
jeopardy.

If there were the mere fact that the attacks on mainstream American culture
have become both increasingly common and embittered, that in itself would not
be especially remarkable; "bourgeois culture," after all, has been
under attack in the United States since at least 1820. The "alienation of
the intellectual" against precisely that culture has been one of the major
factors in American history, and the search by the intelligentsia for a long
series of allies against the mainstream has called into play the various
ideological twists and turns of the Left and has profoundly affected the
politics of the country.

What
is remarkable is that in recent years the mainstream of the
society has been willing, through an unprecedented forfeiture, to allow a vast
demographic change to occur that arms the alienation with ever-increasing
"muscle." If that change continues, the apostles of division
(consisting of many of those marching under the banner of
"diversity") are likely to become ever more strident--and will be
backed up, far more than they are even today, by political lobbies, masses of
voters, and a ubiquitous cultural-intellectual presence. The change I am
referring to is the demographic one resulting from accelerating immigration,
both legal and illegal, mostly from the Third World, and the higher birth rate
among the immigrants. At some time, a "tipping point" will be
reached, beyond which the demographic balance will have swung so far that the
"mainstream" will no longer be in a position to know its own mind or
assert its own will. This will occur long before the present mainstream loses
its majority status. It isn't certain just when the political-ideological
tipping point will be reached, but a serious argument can be made that the
United States has gone beyond that point already.

The usual reaction by white middle class Americans to such crises as they
affect their individual lives has been simply to take advantage of the mobility
that a free society makes possible: they have engaged in all sorts of
"white flight," first from the central cities to the suburbs and then
out into exurbia. They now even flee from an entire state such as California,
doing so as a new type of affluent refugee to Oregon and Colorado and even
Kansas. This flight is understandable on the part of each individual family,
but it has lessened the desire to "stand and fight" and is one of the
factors that accounts for the peculiar political impotence of the American middle
class during the years when angry "minorities" have stood bestride
the American landscape.

There are many signs, however, that the average American is awakening to the
immigration issue. Most conspicuous, of course, is the fact that for several
years polls have shown an increasing opposition to the influx. Another sign is
the June 1994 publication -- in a first printing of 200,000 copies! -- of The
Immigration Invasionby Wayne Lutton and John Tanton. (The publisher is
The Social Contract Press, 316 1/2 East Mitchell Street, Petoskey, Michigan
49770; a hardcover edition is available under the name The Costs of
Immigration.) The Foreword is written by former Senator Eugene McCarthy,
and this by itself attests to the breadth of the emerging consensus. Those who
for other reasons are known as "cultural conservatives" are not alone
in voicing concern.

It is true that the Lutton-Tanton book is one among many that have sought to
catch the public's eye. For reasons that will become apparent, this author has
been especially impressed with Lawrence Auster's The Path to National
Suicide, published by the American Immigration Control Foundation in 1990.
But Lutton and Tanton have assembled, in a brief and easily readable book, so
compelling a compilation of facts about the recent tidal wave of immigration
that this article will mostly be a review of that book, adding such additional
facts and observations as we think important. Wayne Lutton has his doctorate in
history from Southern Illinois University and is a prolific author on the
immigration issue. John H. Tanton, a physician, mixes eye surgery with a
long-standing concern for the environment. He was the national president of
Zero Population Growth between 1975-77.

In the course of our discussion, we will proceed in somewhat a different
order than their own. They start with the consequences flowing from the
immigration in such areas as health and welfare costs, labor market impact, the
politics of race, crime, and quality of life, probably because they want to make
clear quite early why the subject is of vital interest to their readers. It is
only then that they recount the facts about the extent of the immigration
itself. In the present article, it will be important to explore the extent of
the immigration first, doing so as part of placing the phenomenon in a
worldwide perspective. The Third World influx offers to swamp out not just the
United States but Europe as well. The challenge to the United States must be
seen in the context of a massively swelling world population and of demographic
shifts that place the continued existence of both European and American
civilization, in anything like the form we have known them, in doubt.

Our change in the order of discussion will also reflect our sense that the
"tangible consequences" of the immigration, such as are set out so
fully in the Lutton and Tanton book, even though they are highly significant,
are not as important as the intangible consequences. Even if the immigration
had no adverse effects in such areas as health and welfare costs, it would be a
fact of the utmost historical importance if Europe and the United States were
to lose their cultural identity. Such vital "intangible" issues will
occupy at least the initial part of our discussion.

Two Matters That Must be Seen in
Perspective

World Population Growth and
the Swamping of Europe

Writing in Conservative Review, James K. Patterson has said that
"for thousands of years the world's population was between 100 and 300
million...By 1945, the world population of human beings had grown to 2 billion;
by 1975 it had risen to nearly 4 billion and today [1991] it is moving on
towards 5 and a half billion, with nearly 100 million being added
annually."1 Palmer Stacy cites a projection that "world
population...is expected to reach 8.5 billion in the next 31 years," to
which he adds that "most of this increase is in poor Third World
countries."2 To have some sense of the immensity of these
figures, it is worth keeping in mind that a billion is
one
thousand million.

So vast an increase in world population arises out of, and is dependent
upon, modern technology, agriculture, medicine, sanitation, market freedoms,
and trade. Humanity has, so to speak, "climbed out on a limb" by so
greatly increasing its numbers; any failure to maintain the high level of
civilization that exists in the more developed countries can lead to
catastrophes throughout the world that will far exceed any horrors witnessed so
far in human history.

The impact on conditions within individual countries is incalculable.
Patterson says that "in Kenya, the average woman produces eight living
children, so that country doubles its population every seventeen years.
With statistics such as these, no 'developing country' can hope to save itself,
let alone develop."3 Stacy tells us that Mexico increased
"from 34 million in 1960 to 72 million in 1980."4

We know, of course, that in the aftermath of World Wars I and II, which have
been aptly described together as at least in major part a great European civil
war, the nations of Europe suffered severe debilitation and withdrew from their
colonial empires, which prior to the mid-twentieth century extended European
influence into much of what is today called the Third World. What is perhaps
equally significant is that since the end of World War II European
civilization, including its United States extension, has been under heavy
ideological and moral siege. As the voices of brown- and black-skinned peoples
have been amplified the world over, everything "Eurocentric" has come
under attack as inherently repressive. Subject, of course, to notable
exceptions, the professional and academic elites in Europe and America (who in
any case have been under the influence of the cultural alienation of the Left)
have been anxious to add their voices to this siege, projecting a mentality of
apology and moral dejection. In the United States, for example, a great many
educated Americans are more than ready--even anxious--to believe that earlier
Americans acted immorally in "taking the continent from the Indians"
and that the Roosevelt administration "interned" the
Japanese-Americans during World War II.5

This moral attack on Europe and America has had many dimensions, but an
example that is especially illustrative and significant is the massive,
on-going publicity that is given to the Holocaust. Whatever the merits of the
debate that is now going on about the Holocaust, it is indisputable that the
Holocaust story is made the basis for "laying a guilt trip" onto all
of Europe and America. Not only are the German people assigned a generalized
guilt for it, but England, the United States, the French people, the Catholic
Church, and others are said to be guilty, too. Why? Because despite the fact
that the Allies undertook great sacrifices to prosecute the war, it is said
that they were "indifferent to the plight of the Jews." That the
Holocaust is used as propaganda is evident from its innumerable reiterations
and from the fact that it presents a peculiarly selective view of twentieth
century history that ignores the horrors under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others.
The Holocaust story has been endowed with a religious fervor that has a
decidedly anti-European content.

It is upon this demoralized context that the vast population pressures from
the Third World have come to bear. Even if Europe and America's morale and
will-to-exist were at their highest, the vastly exploding world population
would exert enormous pressure to overflow its national and continental
boundaries, and to run like a stream into all available spaces, especially into
places that offer the affluence and high quality of life that Europe and the
United States enjoy. But this stream confronts no obstacles, no sea walls, when
Europe and America have so little moral energy. It would hardly come to the
minds of their elites to think in terms of having civilizational prerogatives
to preserve, much less about how to mobilize a defense against the demographic
washing-away that is occurring. Their own lack of morale and moral stamina
threatens to make any response "far too little and too late."

Germany, a country of some 80 million people, had by June of 1993 taken in
1.8 million Turks, and "more Bosnian refugees than all other nations
combined." The first four months of 1993 saw an influx of 167,000
additional immigrants.6 The political editor of the conservative Das
Ostpreussenblatt in Hamburg, Joachim F. Weber, wrote in November 1993 that
"the foreign population of West Germany before reunification with East
Germany was about five million. In the past three years about two million have
been added...Four-fifths of the foreigners come from various poor countries in
Africa, Asia, and Europe."7 Under German law, a simple uttering
of the word "asylum" has entitled them to enter. A September 1992
dispatch by the New York Times News Service reported that any change in the
pro-immigration Constitution of 1949 can only be accomplished by a two-thirds
vote of the Bundestag; this made approval by the Social Democrats necessary for
passage, but for many years they were unwilling to give it.8 It was
only in May 1993, after a great deal of bitter and often violent social
friction, that the Bundestag restricted the asylum laws.9 Weber
explains that the "real establishment" in contemporary Germany is
composed of the erstwhile revolutionaries of the "generation of
1968," which welcomes a social revolution in the form of a move into
multiculturalism.

Great Britain's influx prompted Winston Churchill's grandson in mid-1993 to
cry out against the "relentless flow of immigrants." Patrick Buchanan
quotes him as saying that "if our prime minister believes that fifty years
hence 'spinsters will still be cycling to Communion on Sunday morning,' he had
best think again. Rather, 'the muezzin will be calling Allah's
faithful to the High Street mosque.'"10 Islam is already
conspicuously present.

France has undergone a similar invasion, foretold by what Jeffrey Hart has
called a "nightmare vision" in Jean Raspail's futuristic novel The
Camp of the Saints.11 Buchanan says that "Churchill's
remarks came just days before France's interior minister called for 'zero
immigration'...."

Demographics as the Basis for Liberal Politics and Ideology in the
United States Since World War II

The intellectual culture that served as the cornerstone of
"liberalism" in the United States during the first half of the
twentieth century was committed, in phases, to one form or another of socialism
and was at all times profoundly alienated against what it saw as the "bourgeois"
mainstream of American life.

Although from a conservative's point of view this "liberalism"
brought about vast changes in the society, especially in the Constitutional
allocation of power, the liberal intellectual culture, in its own in-house
literature as distinct from the image portrayed through the media, was at
virtually all times in a mood of despondency. The changes weren't coming
rapidly enough for it, and it could see ahead to no assurance that the United
States would allow itself to be transformed into a socialist society. I have
traced all of this in my book Liberalism in Contemporary America,
which is based on an in-depth reading of the New Republic, the Nation,
and other liberal writings during that period and the decades following World
War II.12

This intellectual liberalism was not itself the prime mover behind the black
Civil Rights Movement that followed World War II, but seemed merely to follow
meekly into it. It wasn't long, though, before the intellectual culture came to
sense that the irresistible moral appeal of racial equality and the
political-ideological alliances this made possible offered a powerful vehicle
for liberalism itself, giving it a new program and sense of direction. At first
this liberalism was centered around the Civil Rights Movement, but it is
significant that by the 1970s and 1980s the egalitarian thrust came to embrace
the newly burgeoned feminist movement and a multiculturalism that championed a
variety of "minorities." Blacks came no longer to be the centerpiece
of liberal ideology and politics, but to share the stage with others.

Consistently with the amazing adaptability of the American Left, the
theoretical basis for the egalitarian thrust also changed, not once, but in
phases. At first, it took one of the fundamental principles of Western law,
equality before the law, as its premise, and was able to use this successfully
against the racial separation that existed in the United States. By a
considerable leap, it went next to advocating a system of compensatory preferences,
justified on the ground that preferences were needed to undo the effects of
prior discrimination. Then by another leap, the preferences were extended into
a vast system that encompasses not just blacks but women and immigrant
minorities that have no history of prior discrimination to be compensated for.
Beyond that, there is now a championing of the right of non-Americans from all
continents to come and share at the egalitarian table. We call these things
"leaps," but the transition has occurred by imperceptible degrees as
the egalitarian moral claims have swept everything before them.

Little of this would have taken hold, however, if it had not been for the
intellectual, moral vacuum that existed within the predominant culture and that
caused a general acquiescence in it. Many conservatives have opposed it, but
their voices have been cries in the wilderness. Even the election of a
succession of Republican presidents has done little to stimulate an
intellectual and moral, and then political, response. The expression "the
silent majority" captures the essence of one of the main facts about
American society since World War II. Examples abound and relate to a variety of
areas: eighty percent, say, of the voters in Kansas can for several years favor
the death penalty, only to see their preference overridden by officeholders who
march to a different drummer; and, what is most pertinent to the subject of
this article, a strong majority of Americans can for several years favor
tightening immigration, while the political elite that has most influence with
both parties chooses to do just the opposite. There is much lip-service to
"democracy" in the United States, but it is clearly not the
mainstream of Americans that controls the country's political and ideological direction.

The ineffectual role of the American mainstream is the result of a number of
factors. Perhaps the foremost of these is that a society of "acting
men" (which is what a commercial, "bourgeois" society is) needs
an intellectual culture appropriate to itself: one that criticizes and
elevates, but that is essentially loyal. This is precisely something that
bourgeois societies have historically lacked, and it is a fatal weakness. It
leads directly to inarticulateness, failure to take the moral initiative, apologetics,
and to the type of obsequious fawning after "political correctness"
that so many "educated" and "sophisticated" Americans have
shown toward the ideas of the media and of the alienated intellectual culture
throughout much of the twentieth century.

The United States: the Immigration
Invasion, Now and as Projected

The Numbers

In September 1994, an Associated Press story about a report prepared by the
Population Reference Bureau said that "there were about 880,000 legal
immigrants to the United States last year, and as many as 2.5 million entered
the country illegally." Of the illegal entrants, it said that many leave
again but that "an estimated 300,000 stay permanently. "Nearly 3,000
immigrants arrive in the United States each day."13

The total population of the United States is expanding rapidly.
Border
Watch reports that "as recently as 1988, the Census Bureau predicted
that U.S. population (now 255 million) would rise to about 300 million by 2050
and then level off or decline. Now [in early 1993] it projects a population of
380 million in 2050 which will continue to rise." Reasons include not
simply the number of immigrants, but their much higher birth rate.14

Figures from the Census Bureau show a continuing increase in the percentage
of the American population composed of minorities. It was 13.1% at the
beginning of the century, and this had increased to only 14.9 percent by 1960.
But by 1980, it was 20.2%; by 1992, 25.2%. The projection for the year 2050 is
that 47.0% will be minority.15 The Population Reference Bureau
report gave the following ethnic breakdown for the projected 2050 population:
Hispanics 20% (from their present 10%); Asians 10% (from 3%); Blacks 14% (from
12%). "Non-Hispanic whites," the present majority, "will decline
from 74 percent to 52 percent."16 All projections are, of
course, based on certain assumptions. Lawrence Auster cites calculations by
demographer Leon Bouvier which arrive at a 53.8% white non-Hispanic population
in the United States in 2050, but then adds that a more realistic set of
assumptions about immigration and birth rates leads Bouvier to a 48.9% figure.17

Absolute numbers, as distinct from percentages, are startling. A
Los Angeles
Times/Washington Post Service article in early 1993 said that "an
estimated 100,000 Asians are illegally entering the United States each
year...."18 Columnist Cal Thomas says that "while the
population of Port-au-Prince is 472,000, the Haitian population of New York
City is estimated at 400,000.19 A Knight-Ridder News Service article
in December 1993 reports that "the people least discussed in the
immigration controversy are those who come in the front door, using student
visas, visitor visas and work visas. When the visas run out, they just
stay--about 300,000 a year." Approximately the same number come across the
border illegally from Mexico.20

High-Impact Areas in the United States

California. Writing in Chronicles, Wayne Lutton refers to
Leon Bouvier's Fifty Million Californians? and says "California's
population, now at 31 million, may surpass 50 million by 2020. Well before that
happens, perhaps as soon as the year 2000, the state's non-Hispanic whites are
expected to comprise less than half of the population."21 Stacy
says that "California's population grew by 6.1 million during the 1980's,
with almost 40% of the growth caused by immigration. In 1991-92, the state
gained at least 303,000 immigrants while it experienced a net loss of 41,000
Americans who fled to other states."22 George M. Carmichael
told us in 1990 that in California "while whites are still a majority
among the older people, white children are now a minority in the public
schools. Hispanics make up 31.4% of the children enrolled in the public school
system, Asians and other immigrant minorities constitute 11%, and blacks
8.9%--totalling 51.3% non-white."23

Florida. In the same Chroniclesarticle, Lutton said that
"according to the 1990 census, 76 percent of Floridians were 'Anglos,' 13
percent black, and 12 percent Hispanic. If current fertility, mortality, and
migration patterns continue, the Anglo proportion will fall to 64 percent by
2020 and 57 percent by 2050. The proportion of blacks will increase from 16
percent in 2020 and 19 percent in 2050, while the proportion of Hispanics will
likewise rise to 16 and 19 percent over those same periods."24
(These figures show Florida to retain a white non-Hispanic majority longer than
other areas. This would seem to be due to the migration of large numbers of
older whites to Florida for retirement.)

Texas. Bouvier and Dudley Poston (who chairs Texas A&M's
sociology department) have co-authored a book Thirty Million Texans?
It is from this that Lutton derives the figures that "should current
trends continue here, by 2005 non-Hispanic whites will no longer be the
majority and by 2020 Latinos will surpass Anglos to become the state's largest
ethnic group." He points out that in terms of educational attainments, in
Texas "nearly 34 percent of African-Americans and 55.5 percent of Latinos
[have] less than a high school education. A remarkable 38 percent of Latinos
have less than a ninth grade education."25

Some Advantages, Many Damaging Effects

A debate has raged between supporters and opponents of the
influx about its economic effects, the supporters arguing that the immigrants,
including those who have entered illegally, contribute beneficially to the
economy, exhibiting a strong work ethic and doing jobs that Americans don't
want to do. This debate reflects the research of reputable economists on both
sides, but we cannot help but note that sometimes the economic argument by the
supporters becomes ludicrous: in an article entitled "Assimilation
Enriches America's Melting Pot" in Insight, John J. Miller, the
associate director of the Manhattan's Institute's Center for the New American
Community, asks "who could possibly find a lift in Washington if it
weren't for African and Latin American taxi drivers?" -- apparently
forgetting that there were taxicabs in Washington, D.C., long before that trade
was taken over by immigrants.26

There is no doubt that a significant portion of the immigration strengthens
the United States in a number of ways. I have seen this in my law practice. Two
brothers from Laos are amazing self-starters, inventing new computer-board
technology; and a client from Jordan worked two jobs and lived with several
other members of his family so that he could scrimp and save enough to make the
down payment to buy a Dairy Queen franchise. To talk with him is to be deeply
impressed with his energy, entrepreneurial spirit, family commitment,
intelligence and work ethic.

Along the same lines, the United States has long been the beneficiary of a
"brain drain" of scientific and professional people from throughout
the world. In the college of business in which I teach, several faculty members
are from Iran, India and Asia. Wichita has a number of physicians from the
Philippines. In this dimension, the immigration may have revitalizing effects
similar to those experienced by Rome after the city-state conquered the whole
of the Italian peninsula. This raises, of course, a serious policy and ethical
concern. Ought the United States to be draining intelligence from nations that
need it desperately? This has prompted Garrett Hardin to ask: "Are India
and Sri Lanka so well supplied with medical care that they can afford to donate
doctors to us?"27 Just a day before I am writing this, I talked
with a splendid student, now a junior at the university at which I teach, about
his plans. He is from New Delhi, and he intends to stay in the United States
after he graduates, and bring over his two brothers. When I asked him whether
the move of all three brothers to the United States wasn't a tragedy for his
parents and sisters, he answered that they intend to move to the United States,
too.

When we review the points made by Lutton and Tanton in The Immigration
Invasion, we will see a number of tangible disadvantages in such areas as
crime, health and welfare costs, etc. Before we get to those, however, there
are several "intangible" problems to discuss.

The Impending Loss of National, Cultural
Identity

Lawrence Auster refers to what in my mind is the most important question:
"What is the impact of immigration on the whole society--on America as a
civilization?"
(his emphasis). He speaks of "the erosion--and ultimately the
submergence--of every defining aspect of American civilization." He quotes
a Latino author as celebrating the fact that "we're changing the language,
the food, the music, the way of being. We're changing you into a Latin
country." Auster says that "American national culture is being
supplanted by Third World cultures. We are now experiencing the following
phenomena in this country: a 25-foot-high statue of the Aztec god of human
sacrifice is being erected in a public square in the Hispanic-majority city of
San Jose, Calif.; Santeria, a cult that practices animal sacrifice, is now
constitutionally protected under the First Amendment; huge festivals awash in
pagan symbols celebrating 'West Indian Day' and 'Hispanic Day' regularly
disrupt life in major cities...At the same time, traditional American symbols
and images are being discarded because they don't 'represent' our new,
non-Western population...The Alamo is reconceptualized as a Hispanic monument.
The Pearl Harbor memorial is relativized so as not to offend
Japanese-Americans."28

Whether concern about national identity is good or bad is in part a question
of objective fact, since advantageous and disadvantageous consequences of a
change in the identity can be evaluated; but primarily it is a matter of love
and loyalty. It will be the central concern for those who cherish America for
what it has been; those who are alienated against the American mainstream will
oppose any such loyalty; those whose background causes them to be indifferent
may assign little importance to it. We should note, however, that most people
have come to the United States because they have valued what America is. If
that essence is destroyed, their dream, too, is gone.

When we speak of an impending loss of national, as distinct from cultural,
identity, we refer to the threat that is posed to the polity as such. The naive
assumption that the United States is bound forever to remain a unified country
is coming to have less and less foundation. A strong separatist movement has
existed in Canada among the French-speaking population of Quebec; and since the
collapse of the Soviet Union the world has witnessed a large number of ethnic
separations, most notably in the old Yugoslavia, where carnage has taken the
form of "ethnic cleansing." The booklet by the American Conservative
Party entitled "Are We Losing America?" points out that some pressure
groups "are lobbying for completely open borders and others are demanding
a 'return' of the entire Southwestern United States to Mexico, or
alternatively, the creation of a separate 'Chicano' nation to be known as
'Aztlan.'"29 Before such a separation, the United States will
suffer much bitter ethnic strife. Yuji Aida, professor emeritus at the
University of Kyoto in Japan, has no more than expressed a truism when he has
said that "it is only a matter of time before U.S. minority groups espouse
self-determination in some form. When that happens, the country may become
ungovernable."30

The issue of national identity -- the critical issue -- is among those choked by
ideological smog. Love for, and loyalty to, a civilization that has been
preeminently European and Caucasian is attacked as "racism."
Accordingly, Carl Rowan, a black columnist, has been moved to write in the
following vein: "Spewing forth some of the most unsubtle racial bigotry
imaginable, [Patrick] Buchanan argued that 'there is nothing wrong with us
sitting down and arguing that issue that we are a European country, an
English-speaking country.'"31

This makes it vital that Americans become clear about what constitutes
"racism." If it is vicious "racism" to be pro-Caucasian,
but colorful and laudatory to wear a "black power" T-shirt or to
applaud Hispanics' "appreciation of their heritage," the term ceases
to have meaning, and we are left with a raw double-standard that is nothing
other than an intimidating ploy. No one is being demanded to foreswear
allegiance to his kind except Europeans, Euro-Americans and Caucasians;
everyone else is encouraged to celebrate his ethnic, racial or national
identity. For alienated ideologues to promulgate this is understandable; what
is not fathomable is that so transparent a ruse is accepted, as in fact it is,
by so many whites.

With regard to the meaning of "racism," the American Immigration
Control Foundation (AICF) recently said that "perhaps the best definition
is an attitude of superiority and contempt of one racial group for another.
This attitude usually shows itself in attempts of the 'superior' group to dominate
and oppress its victims."32 Instead of defining racism as
"loyalty to one's own kind," and thus branding as vicious an affinity
that people are bound to feel at all times and places, their definition looks
to how that loyalty is manifested. Something is racist if it manifests a
hostile and oppressive posture toward other peoples. A famous line from
Shakespeare is "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" The modern
equivalent of this might well be "An idea! An idea! My civilization for an
idea!" So long as a great many white Americans and Europeans accept the
notion that loyalty to their own kind is racism, they are on their way to
committing civilizational suicide. It is amazing how human beings are moved by
ideas--and, perhaps even more significantly, by confusion regarding ideas.

The activists for other peoples do not hesitate to use this Euro-American
moral diffidence to their own advantage. Wendell Peart has written that
"immigrant advocates who use the term racism do so to hide their own
racial views and preferences. Often, this is done to advance their racial
agendas." His article bore a perceptive title: "Uncontrolled
Immigration is Racist."33

Another ideological issue relating to national, cultural identity arises out
of the vagaries of conservative and "classical liberal" thought.
Auster shows clear insight when he points out that "pro-immigration
conservatives believe that America is defined solely by universal ideas."34
To these conservatives or libertarians, free markets and limited government are
central to what is best in our society--and are values that should work to good
advantage everywhere, among all peoples. It is an easy step from this to the
assumption that free societies have no particular civilizational prerequisites.

Such thinkers are taking their cue from much classical and neo-classical
economic thought. Richard Cobden of the Manchester School, for example, was for
free trade and open borders. The aspiration was that such ideas would spread
throughout the world, leading to a worldwide "liberal" (in the
original sense of that much-abused word) civilization. Classical liberalism in
the nineteenth century was emphatically cosmopolitan, having little apparent
concern about race or nationality.

I am myself a "classical liberal" -- or, rather, a
"neo-classical liberal," since I have long thought that its splendid
nineteenth century insights need in several ways to be refined and extended to
provide a more complete philosophy of a free society. As such, I would venture
that such men as Richard Cobden, John Bright, Adam Smith before them, David
Ricardo, Frederic Bastiat and the like never envisioned a loss of European
vitality. Their system of ideas presupposed, as a given about which they hardly
found it necessary to speak, a certain civilizational order. In his diary, John
Bright (along with Richard Cobden a leader of the Manchester School's campaign
in 1820s England against the tariff on grains) showed how relevant he in fact
considered the level of culture to be. After visiting Turkey, he wrote:
"No inducement is held out to the people to march on the road to
civilization. There exists no spirit of emulation amongst them, and they drag
on their existence as nearly as possible in the same listless and apathetic
manner in which their fathers have done before them."35

Those of us who support free markets and limited government would do well to
note this. It does not serve the ideal of a free society for us to cling with
consistency to a few premises, however excellent, as though they define the
full range of legitimate human concern; instead, those in the classical liberal
tradition need above all to cultivate an understanding of the many
prerequisites both of civilization and of a free society. I have sometimes
thought in terms of an overall "systems theory" of a free society,
but that gives a purely rationalistic impression that doesn't fully convey the
need for appreciation of the rich texture, the seamless web, that must underlie
it.

While we are discussing the conceptual issues that relate to national
identity, we will do well to consider an historical point about which there is
some misunderstanding. Auster mentions that "as immigration advocates are
fond of pointing out, fears that immigration would undermine America's national
culture were raised in the early 20th century...." What he says next would
seem to concede the point: "Since that threatened disaster did not occur,
the advocates continue, similar warnings are utterly invalid now. This
ahistorical argument ignores the profound and decisive differences between
immigration at the turn of the century and today."36

Americans value, as human beings, the people among us who have entered at
any time, just as we will value those who come in by future immigration. We
value each other as friends, neighbors, business associates, and in our other
relations with each other. But in the search for an historically honest
understanding this should not obscure the effects of earlier waves of
immigration. The twentieth century has seen a vast swing away from the
ideals and culture of earlier Americans, and that change
has been a
constant source of distress to those who have valued that earlier America. The
ethnic and religious minorities that came in between 1880 and 1920 were
important components of the "Roosevelt coalition" that supported the
New Deal; they have for many decades provided bloc voting for
liberal-Democratic candidates; and it was masses of immigrants in urban areas
that provided the basis for the big-city "boss system" and
"machines," another part of the Roosevelt coalition. These were
effects of the massive immigration from southern and eastern Europe.

Jews are fully a part of today's America, but this should not obscure the
fact that the Jewish immigration from eastern Europe did much to foster
socialist thought and radical activity, including that of the 1930s and 1960s.
In his 1970 book Remembering the Answers: Essays on the American Student
Revolt, Nathan Glaser (certainly no anti-Semite) observed that "the
East European Jews...became, in the course of a great migration between 1880
and 1924, the dominant part of American Jewry." About them, he wrote that
"Jewish radicalism is not new...If they came out of the Jewish ethnic
culture, as so many did, then we must remember that a powerful strain in that
culture, rivaling in its appeal and significance for Jews the Jewish religion
itself, was Jewish socialism, in a score of variants."37

A Threat to Liberty and Equality

Auster expresses an insight that many of us have not thought of. He says
that "as diversity continues to expand beyond the point where genuine
assimilation is possible, the ideal of equality will also recede...[This likely
will lead to] a devolution of society into permanent class divisions based on
ethnicity, a weakening of the sense of common citizenship, and a growing
disparity between islands of private wealth and oceans of public squalor."38

He speaks also of a threat to liberty. "The inequality, the absence of
common norms and loyalties, and the social conflict stemming from increased
diversity require a growing state apparatus to mediate the conflict. The
disappearance of voluntary social harmony requires that harmony be imposed by
force." Auster points to "the signs of this new despotism [that] are
all around us: the de jure and de facto repression of speech dealing with
racially sensitive subjects; the official classification and extension of
privileges to people according to ethnic affiliation; the expansion of judicial
and bureaucratic power to enforce racial quotas...; the subjection of the
American people to an unceasing barrage of propaganda...."39
Samuel Francis, writing in the July 1990 Chronicles, voices the same
concern: "When the common culture disintegrates under the impact of mass
migrations, only institutionalized force can hold the regime together."
Lutton adds to this the effects on liberty of a society's becoming crowded:
"Had the American population stabilized at the 1950 mark of 150 million,
today we would require no imported oil, pollution would be dramatically lower,
and many other problems would be less intense...."40 Most of
these problems bring about additional governmental intervention into our lives.

Health, Education and Welfare Costs

If, now, we proceed to a review of the tangible (as distinct from the
"intangible") disadvantages, not the least of these will be in the
areas of health, education and welfare. Many of our references will be to the
Lutton and Tanton book The Immigration Invasion, which for convenience
we will refer to as TII.

"The United States has become a 'welfare magnet' to people around the
world," the authors say. "Benefits granted by federal, state, and
local agencies are typically far higher than the annual income in many
countries of origin."41

How much the immigrants use our welfare system depends on whether they are
from less-developed or more highly developed countries. Recent census figures,
say, showed only 3.9% of immigrants from Switzerland to be on welfare, whereas
29.3% of those from Vietnam, and 12.4% of those from Mexico, were.42

In the past, the American "work ethic" has served as a check
against accepting welfare, but TII says that some minorities see it as
an entitlement and are even encouraged to take it. There is a three-year
waiting period, but many older Chinese immigrants (55% of those who have
entered California since 1980) go on welfare as soon as they become eligible.43
A press report in December 1993 said that the Congressional Budget Office
has totalled federal public-assistance spending in four categories as being
$21.3 billion in the next five years for legal and illegal immigrants. This
encompasses four major categories: Food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent
Children, Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income. The report says that
"other estimates of combined state and federal assistance for legal
non-citizens [that is, not even counting those here illegally] range as high as
$11 billion a year." It tells us that "undocumented immigrants"
can't receive public assistance, but that their children can, if born here.44

A sympathetic human interest story in the Wichita Eagle in mid-1993
bore the headline "Somalis struggle to start life in Wichita." It
said that "only one member of the family...has a job, washing dishes at a
Wichita hospital. The rest depend on welfare checks and donations...."45

The argument is sometimes made that "legal immigrants contribute more
through taxes than they consume in government services."
Border Watch,
however, says that the statistics cited for this are years out of date; in
1991, Dr. George Borjas, an economist at the University of California, reported
that "the new immigrants," less skilled and educated, "are
joining the welfare system at a much higher rate than the older
immigrants."46

Of the programs used by aliens, public education is "the largest
expense category," TII says. This is partly because a U.S.
Supreme Court decision in 1982, Plyler v. Doe, held that public
education must be provided to illegal aliens' children. In Los Angeles County
alone in 1991 there were almost 100,000 such children, although not all yet of
school age.47

The Earned-Income Tax Credit, under which low-income tax-return filers
actually receive a check from the federal government instead of paying
taxes, was started under the Nixon Administration--and checks are even sent to
illegal
aliens, since the tax code makes no requirement of legal residence.48

"Unreimbursed health care" costs are enormous for illegal aliens.
TII
cites figures from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services which
show that these unreimbursed expenses -- for that county alone -- were $99.8
million in 1983-4 and went up every year thereafter until in 1988-89 they were
$163.0 million.49

The drain on the public treasury is accomplished, in many areas, with the active
condonation of courts and local governments that reflect the new political
realities. When Illinois tried to expunge illegal aliens from its welfare
rolls, a federal court, in a lawsuit brought by an activist Hispanic
organization, ordered the state to stop asking applicants where they were from.
TII says that "throughout the 1980s, many states and
municipalities declared themselves 'sanctuaries' for aliens and have openly
refused to cooperate with the INS" [Immigration and Naturalization
Service]. In May 1988, an announcement signed by Edward Koch as mayor of New
York City told illegal aliens that "it is not the City's policy to report
you to immigration authorities." In 1990, HUD secretary Jack Kemp held that
public housing must not "discriminate" against illegal aliens.50

Bringing in Tuberculosis

Neil Pierce in the Baltimore Sunwrites that "tuberculosis is
the world's largest cause of death from a single infectious agent," and
warns about the disease-spreading effects of massive immigration.51
Even though the incidence of TB was reduced to historic lows in the United
States just a little more than a decade ago, Border Watch reports that
it is now reaching "epidemic levels" in several major U.S. cities. It
quotes Newsweek to the effect that "immigrants from Southeast
Asia and Latin America [have] brought the disease to the United States in
increasing numbers."52

Labor Market Impact

Julian Simon, a marketing professor at the University of Maryland, has
testified that "immigrants do not take jobs, they create jobs...My
recommendation would be that we simply jump immigration visas to one million
per year."53 But TII points out that the overwhelming
number of immigrants since 1965 have been low-skilled. "Less than 5
percent of legally admitted immigrants are certified by the Department of Labor
as possessing job skills and educational attainments actually needed by the
economy." Instead of their taking only jobs that Americans do not want to
perform, "a 1989 study conducted by Dr. Huddle [economist Donald Huddle of
Rice University]...estimated that two out of every three of the jobs currently
held by illegal aliens could be filled by Americans." An insidious process
occurs, according to Lutton and Tanton: "A major factor in the
displacement of Americans is that many jobs are simply not available to
them...All too frequently job openings are not advertised in newspapers or
listed with state employment services. Instead, aliens recruit other aliens by
word of mouth. Over time, the work places become 'colonized' by
aliens...."54 The immigrants do often create new jobs, but most
of these go to other immigrants, and entire lines of business become run almost
exclusively by aliens. In New York City, "recent immigrants from the
Indian subcontinent now operate about 40 percent of the city's gas stations...;
over 85 percent of the green-grocer stores are owned and operated by Koreans;
Indians and Pakistanis now enjoy a virtual monopoly on newsstands and are now
moving into the jewelry trade."55

Much the same in happening in the professions. "According to the
National Science Foundation," TII says, "about 35 percent of
all engineers now working in the U.S. are foreign-born. The hiring of aliens in
skilled occupations is increasing. Employers often prefer to hire them because
they will work for less than the American pay scale."56 In its
newsletter, the American Engineering Association pointed out in 1992 that the
1990 Immigration Reform Act had tripled the legal immigration of scientists and
engineers, with the result that "unemployment of American engineers has
reach 'record highs' since 1990. In addition to working for less, the foreign
engineers help the companies that hire them satisfy affirmative action
requirements.57 The influx of foreign technicians and engineers has
occurred at the very time that hundreds of thousands of Americans in those
roles have lost their jobs because of cut-backs in the military and the defense
industries.

It is important for readers to understand the differences that exist in the
perception of all this. Economics has for two hundred years prided itself on
being a value-neutral science [although many economists of all persuasions have
very definite economic and social preferences], simply analyzing the operation
of markets in terms of what is most efficient. In those terms, it makes no
difference whether American or Indian engineers are employed in the United
States. Economics as a science is neutral as to nationality. And many employers
have also seen the workforce this same way, being solely concerned about
profitability. An example comes to mind about Pennsylvania in the early
twentieth century: the steel mill owners in the town of Coatesville brought in so
many blacks from the South and so many immigrants from eastern Europe that
great strains were placed on the social fabric, laying the foundation for a
brutal lynching by the townspeople after a black killed a security policeman.58

In modern thought, there is a major tension between economic values, taken
by themselves, and a good many other values cherished by given cultures.
Economics as a science, so long as it remains value-neutral, can only point out
the consequences of varied alternatives and cannot presume to determine the
choice from among them. Inconsistently with this, many devotees of a free
market believe that economic theory demands an exclusion of those other values.
It does not. We do not abandon economics when we embrace one or more of those
values; we simply acknowledge that economic "efficiency" is just one,
albeit a very important, desideratum, even (or most especially) to a "free
society."

The influx into low-paid jobs, small business and the scientific professions
has been replicated in American universities. Lutton and Tanton say that
"many colleges and universities are staffing their departments of
mathematics, business, and engineering with legal aliens. The practice is
expanding to the liberal arts, propelled by 'affirmative action' requirements
for the hiring of favored 'minorities.'...The
Chronicles of Higher Education has run ads listing the services of the 'Minority Faculty
Registry,' based at Southwestern University,...which offers to help candidates
specially favored as minorities find employment at colleges and universities
across the country." The authors go on to tell a startling statistic from
the Christian Science Monitor: that "more than 50 percent of all
faculty under the age of 36 in American universities today are foreign-born."59

The Political Impact

In a democracy, the growth of a given population brings political power with
it, both as an irresistible consequence and because the
ethos of the
society will not, in any case, allow otherwise. The shift of political power to
"minorities" has occurred rapidly in the United States, and is
continuing.

Lutton and Tanton point to specific issues that have thusfar been affected
by this (although we ought to be aware that before long
all issues
will come under its sway). One of these has to do with legislative
apportionment: "The new statistical realities become the basis for
apportioning seats in the federal and state legislatures." It is
noteworthy that not just legal aliens, but illegal aliens as well, are
counted for purposes of apportionment.60 The impact is at first felt
most strongly at the level of state representative districts, but the new
demographic realities will necessarily be felt as well at the Congressional
level -- and in the Electoral College.

Another political effect has been Congress' having "watered down the
English requirement for citizenship." TII tells us that
"today, persons over fifty who have lived here for twenty or more years
are excused from the very elementary English language test required for
naturalization...In late 1993, the INS even conducted an entire naturalization
ceremony in Spanish!" Bilingual ballots are required, by a 1975 amendment
to the Voting Rights Act, in voting districts that meet certain criteria.
Interestingly, Spanish is the only European language that receives this
treatment. "Los Angeles...now provides ballots in Chinese, Vietnamese,
Tagalog (the language of the Philippines), Japanese, Spanish, in addition to
English."61

One would think that, at the very least, the right to vote would be reserved
to citizens. But even that is cracking under pressure. Tacoma Park, Maryland,
recently approved a non-citizen voting right; and pressure is mounting to do
the same in nearby Washington, D.C., the nation's capital and a major city.62

Sixty-five pressure groups lobbied for the "Motor-Voter Bill" that
was signed into law by President Clinton on May 20, 1993. This creates a system
of easy voter registration. Among its other provisions, it "explicitly
discourages attempts to verify a voter registrant's citizenship by providing
that mail-in registration forms 'may not include any requirement for
notarization or other formal authentication,'" according to
TII.63

Gerrymandering to create safe legislative seats for minority groups found
its way into American law with a 1982 amendment to the Voting Rights Act.
Lutton and Tanton point out that "this clearly gives the political
leadership an incentive to keep the population together, ghettoized,
unassimilated and isolated...."64 Another political consequence has been the increasing pressure to admit
Puerto Rico to the union as the 51st state. This would, in effect, make the
United States a multilingual empire, and Lutton and Tanton rightly point out
that demands could then be justified to translate Congressional debates into
Spanish and publish all government documents not only in English but in other
languages as well.65 The United States has passed the point at which
this seems ludicrous.

It is ironic that the growing political power of "minorities" is
leading to a sense among blacks that they are, relatively speaking, losing
power. According to the Los Angeles Times, "The political results
of [Los Angeles'] changing demographics add to the African-Americans' sense of
powerlessness. Once solidly African-American, South Los Angeles is now heavily
Latino. African-Americans fear loss of political power when new City Council
Districts are drawn to reflect the city's fast-growing Latino and
Asian-American populations."66

Not the least of the political consequences is the growing
institutionalization of ethic divisions. "In 1968, Congress passed the
Bilingual Education Act, providing federal funding to school systems struggling
to educate non-English-speaking children...as a bridge to English,"
TII
points out. "However, a bilingual education establishment quickly grew up
and wanted to retain students in their native language environment for much of
their schooling. In addition, maintaining the students' culture now has become
a goal of bilingual education."67 (In this, we see again that
little remains what it starts out to be; the thinking progresses in phases as
one thing leads to another.)

Associated closely with this is the hue-and-cry in universities and the
lower grades for "multicultural education." Proponents sometimes
assert that multiculturalism is nothing other than a good liberal arts
education, such as is produced by students' studying ancient history or French.
But it is foolish to accept this, since it seeks to blind others to the
ideological content of the multicultural movement. Lutton and Tanton describe
multiculturalism accurately when they say that "multicultural education
has become the code word for teaching history and social studies in a manner
sure to develop in minority children a sense of estrangement from mainstream
American society. Students are taught that their ancestors have been the
victims of persecution and injustice in this country...This approach is
rationalized as building self-esteem."68

Crime

The relationship between the massive immigration and crime was dramatized
recently by two high-profile incidents: the February 1993 bombing of the World
Trade Center, for which four illegal aliens from the Middle East were charged;
and the shooting-to-death of two CIA agents outside the CIA headquarters in
Virginia, for which an illegal immigrant from Pakistan (who has fled the United
States) is the suspect.69 But although spectacular incidents help
focus public attention, the more important reality is the immense subterranean
growth of crime as augmented by a significant portion (though of course not a
majority) of those those coming in. TII tells us that "the U.S. Bureau of Prisons reports that
more than 25 percent of federal inmates are non-U.S. citizens." But even
this large prison population doesn't tell the full story: Congressman Lamar
Smith points out that "seven out of eight aliens [who commit crimes] are
either released or given probation and never serve time in prison." Lutton
and Tanton tell us that "over the past five years, an average of more than
72,000 aliens have been arrested annually on drug charges."70

The problem is only in part one of individual criminals.
TII
explains how each ethnic group involves organized crime:
"Colombians in cocaine; Mexicans in marijuana, alien smuggling, and auto
theft; Nigerians in heroin, student-loan and credit-card fraud; Chinese in
heroin and alien smuggling; South Koreans in prostitution; Russians in drugs
and insurance-fraud; Jamaicans in cocaine." Centuries-old criminal
organizations called "Triads" flourish among the Chinese; "the
[California] Attorney General's Office reports that the Wo Hop To Triad, which
is one of the most active Triads in California, has a combined membership of
28,000." These smuggle in 100,000 illegal Chinese immigrants annually, for
which the immigrants are charged fees running as high as $50,000 apiece; and
the Triads' "most important source of wealth derives from their control of
the major supplies of heroin," an activity that centers in New York City.
Japanese crime syndicates are called "the Yakuza." Lutton and Tanton
also tell of Caribbean criminal organizations from Jamaica (which are the most
heavily armed), Haiti and Cuba.71

The media often picture aliens as model citizens, but this is contradicted
by the country's growing awareness of street gangs. In Los Angeles alone,
"gangs of almost every nationality flourish: Samoan, Filipino, Salvadoran,
Mexican, Korean, Vietnamese. Experts estimate there are about 600 gangs."
Non-Hispanic whites seldom organize into street gangs. In Denver, "60
percent of the gang members are black (although they are only 5 percent of the
city's population) and 33 percent are Hispanics (who represent 12 percent of
Denver's population."72

The impact of this in human terms is conveyed by a letter a police officer
in Reno, Nevada, wrote to Border Watch in 1993. He said that
"when I moved to this area Hispanics were rarely seen and had little
contact with the police. During the past five years Reno has come to look more
and more like a suburb of Mexico City. Almost half of the calls police respond
to involve Hispanics...Also five years ago, we had no gang problems in Reno.
Today we have identified a dozen or more immigrant gangs."73

These problems will almost certainly become worse. On April 1, 1994, the INS
was ordered by the Clinton Administration not to run routine fingerprint checks
on immigrants. Doing so had been an effective screening device to prevent the
entry of immigrants with criminal records (9,000, for example, in 1993).74

Environment and Quality of Life

John Tanton has been active on environmental issues for several years, in
1975-7 serving as national president of Zero Population Growth. It is no
wonder, then, that he and Lutton point out that environmental problems
correlate with size of population. If, say, new technology makes possible an
improvement in energy efficiency, the decrease in usage is negated if the
number of people using energy increases. The same applies to all resources.75

The quality of life is affected as population becomes more dense. Harmony
can only be achieved by increasing the amount of regulation. (I remember that
when I was a boy in Denver, people were able to burn their leaves in the fall
and their trash in an "ash pit." Both had to be prohibited when Denver's
growth made smog a problem.)

Recent Immigration Legislation

Lutton and Tanton review the history of American immigration as far back at
the seventeenth century, but we will be content to set out the legislation that
has been instrumental in producing the massive influx of the past 35 years.

1965 Immigration Act

The 1965 Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, eliminated the
"national origins" principle that had been a part of American law
since 1924 and had favored Europeans. The effect was that "85 percent of
the 11.8 million legal immigrants arriving in the U.S. between 1971 and 1990
were from the Third World...." Twenty percent were from Mexico. Once they
were here, immigrants could bring in their relatives, who could then bring in
theirs in an unending chain.76

1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act

President Carter appointed a commission to look into the immigration issue,
and it recommended increased controls. But the 1986 legislation had two sides: one
was restrictive, but only in appearance, while the other granted amnesty to 3.1
million illegal aliens. After 18 months of temporary residency and five years
as a permanent resident, those who were amnestied became eligible for
citizenship -- and could bring in their relatives. The amnesty, which of course
encourages future illegal immigration by those who anticipate future amnesties,
was supposed to be offset by the restrictive side. This consisted of beefing up
the Border Patrol and imposing "employer sanctions" on anyone hiring
illegal aliens. These became dead letters when Congress failed to appropriate
money to pay for the strengthening of the Border Patrol and when the INS wasn't
given sufficient funds to enforce employer sanctions. A second reason the
sanctions haven't worked is that employers have been given no effective means
to verify the legal status of an applicant for employment. Forged documents and
work records are rampant.77

Since World War II, anti-discrimination laws of one kind or another have
freely overridden the "freedom of association" that had until then
been an important American Constitutional principle. As one additional
extension of these laws, the 1986 Act made it illegal for an American to
hire a U.S. citizen in preference to an alien.78

1990 Immigration Act

Despite polls showing a strong majority of the public opposed to lax
immigration, President George Bush signed the 1990 Act, which raised legal
immigration by almost 40 percent. The increase was stimulated by claims of an impending
"labor shortage."79

The Act also allowed half a million Salvadorans to stay in the United States
as a "safe haven." This was to expire in mid-1992, then was extended
one year. None had been sent home by the time TII was written.80

In the course of all this, the United States has adopted a principle that if
an incoming immigrant says "political asylum," he will be allowed
into the country "on parole" pending an INS hearing on his
eligibility. The lag between entry and hearing is 14 months, and two-thirds of
the entrants never appear for the hearing, simply melting into the country.81
One ground for asylum, by itself, has the potential of allowing tens of
millions of Chinese into the country: the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post
Service on June 7, 1993, reported that asylum is usually granted to Chinese
couples who object to China's policy of sterilizing those who have had one
child.

Oddly, as Lutton and Tanton point out, millions of people simply enter the
country through our airports and stay--with no basis at all, and without even
being counted in the statistics as illegal aliens.82 This is a fact
of unfathomable proportions. And, since anyone marrying an American citizen
becomes entitled to permanent resident status in two years, many aliens marry
Americans and then get a divorce as soon as the two years are up. Organizations
exist that arrange these phony marriages.83

The U. S. Supreme Court has held the Fourteenth Amendment to mean that
anyone born in the United States is automatically an American citizen. This
lends itself to enormous abuse, since even babies born to illegal aliens are
instant citizens. When the children reach 18, they are entitled under current
law to bring in their relatives. This causes them to be called "anchor
babies." Almost all other countries look to the legal status of the
parents in determining whether a baby becomes a citizen.84

The Clinton Administration

The Clinton Administration has continued to act contrary to majority
American opinion as shown in the polls. President Clinton has pushed for the
admission of aliens who are HIV-infected.85 A news report on
November 26, 1993, said that "the Clinton administration says it will
actively encourage legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens...The effort could
enfranchise millions of people who have lived in this country for years without
seeking citizenship...The Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that
10 million [are eligible]."86 And hundreds of Iraqi POWs taken
captive in the 1991 Gulf War have been admitted as "refugees," a
process that began under the Bush administration."87

Supporters and Opponents of Open
Immigration

Supporters

Stacy lists some of the groups that lobbied for the 1990 increase in legal
immigration: National Council of La Raza, Mexican American Legal Defense and
Education Fund, Organization of Chinese Americans, Japanese American Citizen
League, Irish Immigration Reform Movement, American Civil Liberties Union, American
Jewish Committee, U.S. Catholic Conference, American Immigration Lawyers
Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of
Manufacturers.88 A group that coordinates such efforts is the
National Immigration Forum.89 The May 1992 issue of Border Watch
listed the names and addresses of 22 major American corporations that had
contributed to the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC); 17 that
contributed to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF);
and 19 that helped support the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). The
companies include such giants as Ford, Mobil, AT&T, Chevron, General
Motors, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola.

Even certain major conservatives have taken a liberal view of the immigration.
The Wall Street Journal has endorsed a Constitutional amendment
declaring "there shall be open borders."90 Stacy observes
that certain "neo-conservatives" such as Irving Kristol, Nathan
Glaser and Midge Decter have argued strongly against "multiculturalism"
but have, inconsistently in his (and my) opinion, just as strongly favored open
immigration.91 Major conservatives, he reminds us, voted for the
1986 amnesty; these included Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dornan, Robert
Michel, John McCain and Vin Weber.92 The Heritage Foundation has
sponsored an Hispanic Heritage month and has published position papers that
advance immigration.93 This amounts, in effect, to a crisis within
"conservatism," since a continuation of the influx will potentially
frustrate virtually everything conservatives of all types have worked for for
many years.

Opponents

Any listing of the opponents of relaxed immigration runs the risk to failing
to mention a good many who deserve recognition. Suffice it to say that the
American Immigration Control Foundation (P.O. Box 525, Monterey, VA 24465)
publishes the monthly newsletter Border Watch, to which we have
referred frequently here; and that the "Federation for American
Immigration Reform (FAIR)" is described as "one of the most fiercely
vocal anti-immigration groups."94Chronicles
magazine
has written splendidly on the subject. And, of course, the Social Contract
Press, with its wide dissemination of The Immigration Invasion, is
doing much to enlarge and to deepen the public's awareness.

The issue is cutting across traditional party and ideological lines, as
witness the Foreword to TII written by former Senator Eugene McCarthy.
Samuel Francis has reported that "the 1990 Roper poll...found [that] 74
percent of Hispanic-Americans and 78 percent of black Americans don't want more
immigration. Ninety-one percent of all Americans wanted illegal immigration
halted."95 That the minorities themselves do not want
additional immigration will no doubt be a fact of major significance to groups
attempting to mobilize a political movement to stop the influx.

Suggested Solutions

If the American people develop the requisite understanding and will, and if
they move themselves to develop political means to see their wishes realized in
policy, -- and these are big "ifs"! -- there are a great many things
that can be done. Here are some of the suggestions that appear in the
literature:

. To deny major governmental services to illegal
aliens. This was the thrust of California Proposition 187 on the November 1994
ballot.

.Transport illegal entrants, when caught, back to
the interior of their own country, rather than simply to place them across the
border, from which they make repeated (and ultimately successful) attempts to
re-enter.

.Use troops to guard the Mexican-American border
until the Border Patrol can be very substantially increased in size and
properly trained. Mexico, by the way, uses troops to bar illegal immigration
across its own southern border.

.Impose small fines on illegal aliens who are
carrying cash.

.Confiscate the money and property of those
smuggling aliens into the country, just as the United States does with drug
smugglers. This should especially be done with the ships that Chinese smugglers
use to bring in tens of thousands of Chinese every year. [The lack of due
process, up to now, in such seizures of property will need to be remedied
before this can be advisable. A serious assault on property rights has emerged
as hundreds of new laws provide for property seizure.]

.Enact legislation, or a Constitutional amendment
if needed, to change the rule that any baby born in the United States, even to
an illegal alien, is automatically a citizen. One suggestion is to make
citizenship depend on the legal status of the baby's mother.

.Exert diplomatic and perhaps economic pressure to
secure the cooperation of foreign governments to stop the flow. Governor Wilson
of California sought the help of the Mexican government, but was rebuffed.96
The rebuff ought not to be the end of the story.

.Build secure fences along key crossing points
between the United States and Mexico, and use high-tech imaging devices and
detection systems. While this idea is often ridiculed, Hong Kong has had good
results in fencing its border.97 Fencing shouldn't be allowed to
become a "Maginot Line" type of illusion; but if it is used as just
one of several responses, it can make a valuable contribution.

.Enforce employer sanctions against the hiring of
illegal immigrants. This means increasing the manpower of the INS and introducing
a means by which employers can check the legal status of applicants for
employment. Two ways that have been suggested to accomplish the latter are to
develop a tamper-proof form of identification card, and to have a call-in
system (such has become well-nigh universal for merchants honoring credit
cards) to determine status. The objection is made that either the card or the
call-in system would be damaging to personal freedom in the United States. This
can hardly be doubted, but the fault lies not with efforts to stop the influx;
the damage to a free society comes from the invasion itself and the means it
makes necessary to overcome it.

.Crack down hard on the production and sale of
forged work records and immigration documents.

.To accommodate the need for migrant workers in
agriculture and elsewhere, it has been suggested that a short-term "guest
laborer" status should be created which would be carefully monitored and
which would not involve the migrants' bringing in of their families.98

.Impose a modest border-crossing fee to provide
funds for expanding the Border Patrol.

.Greatly restrict the right to claim
"political asylum," since potentially hundreds of millions of people
in other countries will at some time or other be able to claim persecution. And
stop letting the entrant "out on parole" pending a hearing, since
this makes possible the person's melting into the population. Hearings in the
relatively few cases that will be allowed should be held promptly. Lutton and
Tanton recommend that for asylees and refugees "the emphasis should be on
temporary
succor with eventual repatriation" (their emphasis).99

.Stop allowing people to transfer money to foreign
banks without proof that the transferor is in the United States legally.

.It is sometimes suggested that the "real
solution" is to improve other countries so that their citizens don't want
to leave them.100 No doubt this is logically appealing, but for the
United States to attempt to oversee the well-being of billions of people in
other parts of the world would be quixotic in the extreme.

.Lutton and Tanton want an immediate moratorium on
all but a small amount of immigration until a satisfactory long-term policy can
be debated and written into law. They say that, "first and foremost,
Congress must decide on the purposes of immigration."101

.A way needs to be devised to prevent aliens from
over-staying their visas needs. TII suggests a bond-posting
requirement, or that aliens be required to purchase non-refundable round-trip
airline tickets.102

.Local authorities should not be permitted to make
their localities sanctuaries for illegal aliens. The widespread flouting of
federal law by such governments is the only major violation of the
Constitution's "Supremacy Clause" (which declares federal law
paramount over state and local law where they conflict) that this author has
even heard of being allowed.

.The "chain-reaction" of immigrants
bringing in their relatives must be curtailed. Lutton and Tanton suggest
allowing in only the nuclear family itself.103

.Provide no "affirmative
action" preferences for immigrants.104

.Require a knowledge of English as a requisite for
citizenship.105

.Put an end to bilingual
programs in schools and in public services.106

.Grant no more amnesties.107

.Stop the emphasis on "multiculturalism"
which has swept the "politically correct" movement, from university
presidents on down. Return to an emphasis on a common culture, with
emphatically European roots. This one measure by itself will require massive effort,
since at present the push for multiculturalism is proceeding almost without
impediment, despite the frequent protests by conservatives.

.Review critically the many attacks on the United
States' historical heritage. Renew the belief that mainstream Americans once
had in themselves.

There are others. In other words, there is much that can be done.

Conclusion

Although there are many critical issues today, some become paramount because
a failure to solve them will prove definitive as to all others. The swamping-out
of Euro-American civilization by massive immigration from an exploding Third
World population is one of these. It should be considered a litmus-test issue
for all Americans, including those conservatives and libertarians whose
philosophy has not heretofore taken into account the demographic prerequisites
of the free society they so genuinely wish to sustain. The hour is already very
late, perhaps too late. Those who care about it must respond now.

ENDNOTES

1. James K. Patterson, "The Liberal Answer to World Over-Population:
The Advanced Nations Should Stop Reproducing!," Conservative Review,
October 1991, p. 6. Lutton and Tanton say that world population has been
growing at the rate of over 90 million people per year since 1996; Wayne Lutton
and John Tanton, The Immigration Invasion (Petoskey, Michigan: The
Social Contract Press, 1994, p. 118.

2. Palmer Stacy, "The Great Betrayal: U.S. Immigration Policy,
1965-1993," Special Report, American Immigration Control Foundation, 1993.

3. Patterson, "The Liberal Answer," p. 7.

4. Stacy, "The Great Betrayal," p. 8.

5. See the discussion of these issues in Dwight D. Murphey, "The
Historic Dispossession of the American Indian: Did It Violate Our
Ideals?," Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Fall
1991; and "Issues in the American Cultural War: The World War II
Relocation of the Japanese-Americans," Journal of Social, Political
and Economic Studies, Spring 1993.